The World of Nagaraj

Nagaraj's world is quite and comfortable. Living in his family's spacious house with only his wife Sita for company, he fills his day writing letters, drinking coffee, doing some leisurely book keeping for his friend Coomar's Boeing Sari Company, and sitting on his veranda watching the world and planning the book he intends to write about the life of the great sage Narada. But everything is disturbed when Tim, the son of his ambitious landowing brother Gopu, decides to leave home and come to live with Nagaraj. Forced to take responsibility for the boy, puzzled by his secret late-night activities and by the strong smell of sprits which lingers behind him, Nagaraj finds his days, suddenly filled with unwelcome complication and turbulence, which threaten to alter for ever the contented tranquility of his world. The latest of R.K.Narayan's magnificent Malgudi books, The World of Nagaraj is beautifully written, funny and haunting , evoking in marvelously rich detail the atmosphere of a small town in southern India and creating a magical world into which the reader is instantly drawn.